Tuesday, November 3, 2026

WoW Wild Shape Forms

 While I think if I ever play a Druid in a D&D campaign, I'm hoping it will be after the Circle of Titans is released in whatever book they're planning that one for (though I could also imagine going Wildfire or Stars if I wanted to focus more on spellcasting). However, the appeal of the Circle of the Moon is pretty central to the Druid fantasy - being effective at using various animal forms to fight your foes.

One of the downside, though, of the Circle of the Moon, is that the beast forms you can pick from often aren't really... ideal for a player character. In particular, your AC and your attack bonuses are often lower than you would be able to get as a comparable melee-based character.

The One D&D playtest for 5.5 back in 2023 initially presented a Druid that used, rather than existing stat blocks, a set of scaling stat blocks that would, for example, use your spell attack bonus for your attacks and also use your Wisdom to determine your AC.

However, there were two problems. The thing I felt was less of a real problem was that it shrunk down all beasts you could transform into to just a Beast of the Land, Sea, and Air (similar to what they did with the Beast Master Ranger's companions, though this change did remain through to print,) and thus you lost out on, say, picking a spider form for Spider Climb.

The bigger problem, though, was that the forms sucked. For example, that Wisdom-based AC was just, like, 10+Wis, meaning that even when you capped your Wisdom, you'd wind up with an armor class that was lower than a level 1 Fighter in chain mail.

The uproar over these saw them revert Wild Shape to its previous version, with a few changes to the way that the feature interacted with HP (giving you Temp HP instead of replacing your HP, which has both benefits and drawbacks). But I was one of a minority that felt that they gave up on this idea too soon - that they should have instead just made better stat blocks.

Well... I think we have some better stat blocks now. But are they good enough?

In WoW, Druids have just a few shapeshift forms. Bear Form is built for tanking, and actually changes your resource system so that you use Rage like a Warrior (this is nothing like D&D's Barbarian rage, but is a resource you spend on abilities that builds up as you deal damage, so there's kind of a positive feedback loop as you attack and spend rage to generate rage). Cat form is built for damage-dealing, and makes you function more like a Rogue, with a resource called Energy (which just regenerates quickly) and Combo Points (which you build up with certain attacks before spending them on a "Finishing Move"). Outside of this are just a Travel form (which can shift between a fast deer-like form for overland travel, a walrus-like form for swimming, and a bird for flying) and, for Balance Druids, a Moonkin form (think an upright owlbear with antlers).

The WoW book, which I now actually have access to myself, has given us a Cat form and Bear form. The idea is that A: you can play this like you would play these roles in WoW and B: you have a stat block that can scale with your level and remain good from 3 to 20 (these do require the Circle Forms trait from Circle of the Moon.)

But... are they good? Let's take a look:

Cat Form:

You are Large, with a speed of 40 feet.

Your AC is 13 + Wis.

    This, of course, matches what we get anyway as a Moon Druid, but is nonetheless decent. Assuming we start with a +3 and eventually get +5, we're going to find ourselves with comparable AC to someone who starts in Chain Mail and eventually gets Plate.

Most of this is what you'd expect - your Strength and Dexterity are set to your Wisdom score, so you'll be quite good with those, and you get proficiency in Stealth (so you'll be good at that.)

But how about attacks?

Well, first off, yes, you get to use your Spell Attack modifier for your attacks, which is great - you'll have a decent hit chance (and can, I think, even boost it potentially depending on how you interpret Wand of the Warmage or how a Moon Sickle works).

The Cat has a multiattack, but here we've got a little bad news:

The multiattack lets you make one Pounce attack and one use of Prowl.

Pounce is a melee attack that deals 1d10+Wis slashing damage on a hit. The damage increases to 2d10 at level 5, 3d10 at 11, and 4d10 at 17. If you had advantage on the roll, the target takes an extra 1d6 slashing and, if it's large or smaller, it is knocked prone. The bonus damage goes up at Druid levels 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18, by 1d6 at each of these levels.

       This is actually really interesting: Obviously, it's inspired by a Rogue's Sneak Attack. The damage scales up in multiple ways, but by level 18, we're looking at an attack that hits for 4d10+6d6+5, or about 46 on average.

Prowl lets you move up to half your speed without provoking opportunity attacks and then, at the end of that movement, take the Hide action.

    This is there, of course, to set up our advantage to get with Pounce. The obvious cycle we're supposed to go through is to either start off hidden and then attack, then retreat with Prowl to remain hidden until the next turn, or alternatively, we could try to hide first and then go after our foe.

    Clearly, this is meant to give us something similar to the Rogue's Cunning Action Hide/Sneak Attack. An 18th level Rogue with something like a Shortbow would hit for 1d6+9d6+5, or like 40. So this actually compares pretty favorably.

    But we will only get a single attack, meaning A: we better land it and B: we won't benefit as much from spells like Fount of Moonlight or Conjure Minor Elementals, which can grant bonus damage on each hit. Without the bonus damage, Pounce is doing just a bit better than cantrip damage (and the same if we had Potent Spellcasting).

However, beyond this multiattack, we also have Primal Wrath. Here, we can expend a spell slot to slash nearby enemies. Creatures of our choice in a 5-foot emanation make a Dex save against our spell save DC, taking 2d6 per the level of the spell plus our Wisdom in slashing damage.

    That's interesting - we're not going to be able to hit a ton of targets, though thanks to the fact that we're Large, we could get a few more (I think up to 12?). The scaling here is actually not bad, though - with 2d6 added at each level, a 2nd level version would be 4d6+Wis (probably still 3 at 3rd level) for, say, 17 damage to a few targets. It is save-for-none, though, so it's a bit risky and certainly falls off sharply compared to save-for-half effects.

Bear Form:

Again, you're Large.

Your speed is 30.

Your AC is 15+Wis

    So, we're basically getting a +2 bonus over other Wild Shape forms. That's not bad, and will let us get up to a 20 AC by the time we cap wisdom.

We have a multiattack, which allows us to do two Mangle attacks.

Mangle is a melee attack that uses our spell attack modifier to hit and deals 1d8+Wis slashing damage. The damage goes up at levels 5, 11, and 17 by 1d8.

    This is very basic, but winds up being pretty great. It's like wielding a longsword, but then also gets cantrip-style scaling. With two attacks, by the time we're 17, we'll be doing 23 with each attack, which actually gets us very precisely to what the Cat gets with the one attack by level 18.

    But unlike the Cat, we don't need to really meet any conditions for this other than landing our hits. Furthermore, spreading our damage between two attacks smooths out our damage and the pain of a miss. But even more importantly, a second attack will double the scaling of any damage-increasing concentration spells like, as mentioned above, Fount of Moonlight or Conjure Minor Elementals. This is clearly better. But we're not done.

Frenzied Regeneration is a bonus action that lets us expend a spell slot and get Temp HP equal to 5 times the spell's level.

    Given that we can cast Cure Wounds in wild shape form as a Moon Druid, I would only use this if we're desperate for healing. Note as well that we're already getting Temp HP for using Wild Shape anyway, so we shouldn't use this until all of that has been chewed through. Could be clutch, but I'm skeptical it will see much use.

Growl is a reaction we get when a creature we can se attacks a target other than us within 5 feet of us. We impose disadvantage on the triggering attack and against all other attacks against hte target until the start of our next turn if we remain within 5 feet of them.

    So, this kind of cool. We need to stick very close to the ally we're protecting, but when we do, we can make it a lot harder to hit them. This is better than the Protection Fighting Style, which I think only affects one attack.

Overall Thoughts:

    Bear Form is the clear winner here, and should be your default choice, and maybe just your default choice as a Moon Druid in general. The Cat Form is probably better-suited for infiltration and scouting, and the benefit is mainly that if you do wind up in a fight, you can defend yourself decently. But I would say for full-on battle, Bear has got to be the best choice.

    But more broadly, I think that I would recommend any Moon Druid, even in a non-Azeroth campaign, to at least include these forms in your "prepared forms" moving forward. The scaling here is just a lot better than any Beast stat blocks you can find (I think the Giant Scorpion has three attacks in their multiattack, but their attack bonus is low).

    The Cat form, appropriately enough, suffers from some of the flaws in the design of the Rogue, but again, I think it will have its uses. Maybe if we get a Tasha's-like supplement in the future, they can bring in these and perhaps add a couple others, like Bird form or Wolf form, to broaden out what Moon Druids can choose from.

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